


Numbers One and Three

by ughineedcoffee



Series: The Runt of the Litter [34]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Brother Sam, Gen, Learning to Drive, Parental Dean Winchester, The Impala - Freeform, Winchester Sister, little sister - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29889810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ughineedcoffee/pseuds/ughineedcoffee
Summary: She's got a learner's permit and a good excuse, but that won't win her any mercy with Dean considering she's just stolen his Baby.
Series: The Runt of the Litter [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112966
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3





	Numbers One and Three

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos, guys <3 Here's the Saturday update, and I'm sorry that it's coming so late in the day again. I meant to post it this morning  
> Anna is sixteen in this one.

"Please, Dean. Please, Dean. Please, Dean. Please, Dean. Please, Dean," Anna repeated, following Dean down the hallway and holding onto one of his arms with both hands.

"No, Anna. No, Anna. No, Anna. No, Anna. No, Anna."

"Come on, _please_. It's been, like, three weeks since the last time you took me driving, and I'm gonna crash into a tree during my driver's test if I don't practice again."

"We haven't even scheduled it yet," Dean told her reasonably as they entered the kitchen.

"Yeah, exactly. That's the other thing. I'm almost seventeen. Kate's had her license for a _year_."

"Oh, so you make your life choices based on what Kate does now?"

"I've been making my life choices based on what Kate does for three years. Don't pretend that's new."

Dean sighed and pulled a coffee mug out of the cupboard. He set it on the counter with a little more force than necessary. "Yeah, well, _I_ don't organize _my_ life around Kate's, and I already told you we couldn't go today."

"I know, but-"

"So why are you still arguing with me about it?"

That dangerous dad look was starting to come out in Dean's eyes, but Anna pushed on anyway. "Because it's been three weeks," she reminded him. "And you said before we even went for the first time that we would be consistent. Sporadically deciding to go driving when you feel like it and taking anywhere from twenty four hours to three weeks is not consistency. It's abuse of power."

Dean shot her a look that said he was anything but impressed. Anna felt like with every point she made, she was getting further from winning this argument. The biggest reason for that? Dean didn't like being challenged, and he didn't like being talked back to, and anytime Anna disagreed with him on anything, he always seemed to feel like she was doing both of those things.

But it wasn't about that for her. She just wanted to get her license so she could drive herself to school, get out of the bunker more when the boys weren't home-- not that she would mention that. Neither of her brothers would be thrilled at the prospect of her going out all the time when they were gone, so if anything that would probably be incentive for Dean to wait even longer to take her driving again.

"Come on, please," she begged.

Dean sighed heavily, looking anything but happy about this. "Alright, fine. We'll go this afternoon. But I don't want another word about it until then."

"Yes," Anna hissed and pumped her fists in the air. "Thank you!" she beamed and hugged him tight around the waist.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean grumbled, patting her on the back a couple times before pulling away to drink his coffee. As she hurried out of the room to go tell Kate, she heard him warning her, "The badgering ain't gonna work next time."

()()()

Anna knew the drill pretty well by now. She could cruise down the road without freaking out, sometimes even going too fast for Dean's liking and getting reprimanded even though she wasn't actually speeding. She could take turns reasonably well, though she did still get a little nervous about intersections where there were actually other people and cars around. Dean said she needed to trust herself, and she was trying to improve on that. She was good with traffic laws, not that she'd ever had an issue with that.

She'd gotten her permit the first time she took the test. Anna was eager enough to start driving that she'd studied the manual inside and out as soon as she'd turned fifteen. The boys had been less eager to see her behind the wheel. She didn't know why. But she did know that they weren't being very subtle about it. They'd both been reluctant to let her take the permit test, trying to insist she wait one more year. But she'd been relentless and eventually convinced them to schedule it. She'd been thrilled when she passed with flying colors, and Dean had agreed to take her driving for the first time that afternoon. She'd been a little nervous, but, unsurprisingly, she was something of a natural behind the wheel. Her excitement had been enough to convince Dean to give her more driving lessons nearly every day that first week.

Things had been slow again since then, though. For a while, they'd done weekly lessons, and then they'd started to become more sporadic. After the incident with the party she and Kate had gone to, there'd been a couple months where she hadn't gone driving at all, and Dean had actually been the one to bring it up one day, which was very unusual for him.

The law required that she wait a year before taking her driver's test to get her actual license, but that year had been up for nearly four months now, and Anna still hadn't been able to convince Dean to schedule her driver's test. She'd tried giving him space, pestering him relentlessly, and even, at one point, begging Sam to side with her and talk to Dean, but he'd refused.

She was getting tempted to go behind Dean's back and schedule it herself, but she knew that would make things much worse, and she didn't want him to be harboring that kind of mistrust the first time she asked him if she could take the car somewhere. She didn't anticipate that conversation going her way even if she was well within his good graces when she asked.

As she pulled into the parking lot of a fill-up station after a half hour of driving, Anna suddenly felt brave. She put the car in park and killed the engine before turning fully in her seat to face her brother. He looked a bit startled by the move, but his face settled into a frown.

"What?"

"Why do you hate this so much?"

Dean looked confused, and Anna couldn't actually tell if he was faking it or not. "What?" he said again.

"Me. Driving. Why does it wig you out?" she asked, being purposely candid. It was the only way to get a straight answer sometimes, making it as obvious as possible that she wasn't feeling patient and didn't want to wait while he beat around the bush.

"What, are you kidding me? Kid, you're sittin' behind the wheel of my Baby right now. If that ain't proof I'm not wigged out, I don't know what is."

Anna turned her head to look out the windshield. In theory, that was true. But in practice? She looked back at her brother. "Then schedule the test."

Dean's whole expression changed. He looked vaguely caught off guard for a second, but he then just looked at her in such a way that Anna somehow just _knew_ he was going to say no again. "Anna," he started, and his tone of voice confirmed her suspicions.

"Well, then, seriously," Anna snapped. "What's freakin' you out?"

"I just- I don't know why you need to rush into this," he excused, his voice going a little higher in that way it rarely did because Dean Winchester rarely felt the need to make excuses. All of it only served to exasperate Anna even more. He was avoiding this like she'd never seen him avoid anything, and he wouldn't even admit to it.

"Rush?" she challenged. "Dean, maybe I was rushing when I wanted to get my permit _on_ my fifteenth birthday. But it's been, like, a year and a half since I passed the test. I'll be seventeen in literally two months. That's not rushing!" She got only more frustrated when she realized Dean was barely listening and seemed to just be waiting her out. She shook her head and scoffed, but that just pissed her brother off.

"Do you wanna ride shotgun on the way home?" he threatened, narrowing his eyes at her.

Anna grit her teeth, but the fight went out of her, because _no_ , she did not want to ride shotgun on the way home. She wanted to drive. It was deeply obnoxious how effective that threat was, though. "You have cash?" she asked. Dean's face went from stern to confused again the instant she finished asking the question. "For gas?"

"Oh. Yeah." He handed her a twenty.

After she'd paid inside, Anna walked back out to the car with her hands in her pockets. She avoided looking at her brother through the windshield, worried her bitterness would show on her face and get her booted out of the driver's seat. Instead, she pumped the gas and stewed in her disappointed anger. She wondered if she wasn't as good a driver as Dean had been telling her she was since she'd started learning. But it wouldn't have been like him to lie to spare her feelings about something like driving-- something that could have been dangerous if she were really _bad_ at it. She just couldn't think of any other reason for him to skirt around the issue of her test.

She sighed as she heard the pump click and pulled the nozzle out. She got into the driver's seat, closed her door, and was about to turn the key when Dean spoke.

"I'll schedule the test."

For a second, all Anna could do was stare at her brother and try to determine whether he was serious. Then, slowly, she just smiled, big, bright, and genuine-- she knew it would mean more to Dean than a thank you-- and turned the key in the ignition.

()()()

Childish as it made her feel, Anna was so excited for the rest of the night that she couldn't even go to sleep. Instead, she watched every Paramore concert she could find on YouTube and pictured herself blaring _Riot!_ in her own car, cruising down the highway. It would be a long time before she could get her own car, of course, but she felt like it was a good night for dreaming.

It was just around midnight when she wandered out into the hallway, thinking about ice cream and Rick and Morty. But she heard low voices as she entered the kitchen and looked toward one of the other two doorways that branched off the kitchen. The boys were sitting in the war room talking.

Content to just get what she was looking for and go back to her room, Anna started to walk toward the fridge. But she froze when she realized she'd heard her name. She looked in the direction of the war room again. They weren't talking _to_ her. They didn't even know she was awake. So they were talking... _about_ her. She swallowed, feeling fearful, annoyed, and confused all at once.

She wasn't sure she wanted to know what they were saying about her, but she knew she couldn't stand the thought of leaving without figuring it out.

She moved over and took a careful, quiet seat at the table since it was close enough for her to hear the actual content of their conversation if she strained to listen. It took a minute for her to pick up on even one full comment.

"I guess I wasn't thinkin' about it from her end."

Anna frowned. Was Dean admitting he'd been wrong? That was interesting to say the least. She couldn't make out what Sam said in response, but she heard a glass clink against the table. They were drinking and talking, she determined, which made sense, because as far as Anna knew, they didn't usually stay up past midnight. Or if they did, they didn't sit out in the war room or the library and instead were more likely to migrate to their respective bedrooms.

"...looks at me..." she heard another snippet from Dean and leaned closer to the wall. She couldn't justify it to herself as anything else at this point; she was eavesdropping. "...just goes, _why's it freak you out?_ "

The next thing Anna heard was Sam laughing. It was brief, but it was genuine. She frowned. She'd thought they were talking about her, but she couldn't be sure at this point.

"I was lookin' at her, and I realized she was frickin' right. It does freak me out, and it freaks me out 'cause she's gettin' older, and she _knows_ she's gettin' older."

Anna's face scrunched in confusion for a second, but she suddenly realized exactly what Dean was talking about, and her face relaxed with the realization. She smiled a little but didn't let herself dwell on it, just strained to listen some more.

"It _is_ weird," she heard Sam admit. There was a pause like he was taking a sip of his drink, or maybe he was just staring contemplatively at his glass. "The thought of her behind the wheel."

Her theory cemented, Anna fixed her eyes on a coffee mug that had been left on the table and just listened.

"I swear, that first day we went drivin', all I could think about when she sat behind the wheel was that day we rode the bumper-cars when she was seven."

Anna heard another laugh from Sam, and she smiled fondly herself at the memory. She could hardly remember anything that had happened that day, but she remembered that it had been a really good day.

"... gotten better since then." She couldn't make out the first part of what Sam said, but she could infer.

She heard another laugh and what she thought was a, "Yeah," from Dean. It was quiet for a minute, and she could picture the looks on their faces, nostalgic smiles and bittersweet glimmers in their eyes. "...can't believe I'm sayin' this..." As if in response to his apparent embarrassment, Dean's voice dropped low enough for a moment that Anna had a hard time hearing him. "...growing pains," was all she could discern. It was enough to make her wrinkle her nose, though. Had he changed the subject? He couldn't still be talking about her... could he?

"I think..." she heard Sam start. She grew frustrated when she once again couldn't decipher most of what he said. She caught the tail end of his reply, though, just the words, "...only natural."

Their voices dropped even lower to the point she couldn't hear anything beyond single words here and there, and Anna frowned, but she didn't pursue her eavesdropping any further. They weren't saying anything that she should find particularly worrisome, just interesting, and she was beginning to actually feel tired sitting in the dimly lit kitchen with the seemingly wordless hum of her brother's voices so close. Resignedly, she gave up and went back to her room, not even bothering to get any ice cream.

As she got into bed, Anna yawned widely and squinted up at the ceiling thoughtfully. It was a strange thought, Dean getting all gushy about her growing up. But she always had been able to unlock his softer side-- from hugs and kisses to chick flick moments-- and she couldn't think of a better explanation for the way he'd been acting about her driver's test.

In fact, there were a number of things that had happened in recent years that could be explained, at least in part, by the knowledge that Dean was having a hard time letting her grow up. For one thing, he and Sam hadn't let her date until sixteen-- not that she'd been all that upset about that for the most part-- and even then Dean had been beyond suspicious of every date.

Anna rolled onto her side and pulled her blanket up to her chin. She didn't know what she should be feeling about this. Smothered? Loved? Both? She settled on both and closed her eyes to go to sleep.

()()()

"-na. Anna."

She inhaled deeply and cracked her eyes open. It took her sleep-fogged brain a moment to realize that it was Dean standing over her and gently shaking her. She squinted at him, still waking up.

"We got a case in Great Bend, Rugrat. Get your gear. You're comin' with us."

Anna scrunched her face up as she tried to wrap her mind around the meaning of the most basic words he'd used. Case. Great Bend. She was supposed to get ready to go on a hunt with them?

"Now?" she mumbled sleepily.

"Nah, I was thinkin' maybe around Christmas," Dean quipped. "Get dressed. I'm makin' breakfast and then we'll go."

She rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand. "Mkay," she agreed. He gave her a pat on the shoulder before leaving her to get up.

With an exhausted groan, Anna forced herself to sit up. She knew if she were to let herself lay down for even another few seconds, she'd have been unable to convince herself to get up after. She needed to take a shower and diffuse her curly hair and figure out what schoolwork she had yet to do that was due tomorrow, Monday, so she could take it with her to Great Bend. But the thought of doing literally any of that made her want to lay back down and sleep for an eternity, so she forced herself to work on autopilot.

She showered and scrunched leave-in conditioner into her hair before pulling out her hair dryer and spent fifteen minutes drying and diffusing her hair. She hated this routine with a passion, but if she waited more than two days before thoroughly conditioning, scrunching, and diffusing her hair, it got unbearably frizzy, and she hated a frizzy head even more than she hated spending almost half an hour working on her hair in the morning four days out of the week.

She still felt groggy even after she'd put on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and her purple OSIRISes, so she didn't bother figuring out what homework she had left. She just grabbed her whole backpack and her laptop and brought it out to the kitchen with her.

"You're still gonna schedule my test," were the first words out of her mouth as she sat down at the kitchen table where her brothers were. "Right?"

Dean's head was angled down toward his plate, but he raised his eyes to her with a look that said he didn't appreciate her tone of voice. Anna held his eyes and forced herself not to squirm. "I said I'd schedule it, and I will," he said and pushed a plate of eggs at her. "Eat so we can go."

Feeling off-put by the edge of annoyance in Dean's voice, Anna pursed her lips at him before digging into her breakfast. Maybe yesterday she'd been nothing but confused as to why he was so reluctant to schedule her test. But after last night, she understood. He just didn't want to let her grow up. And that was beyond unfair. Still, assuming that he did as he'd promised and scheduled her test sometime in the next couple days, she would have no beef with him.

She got up for a cup of coffee and marveled for a second at how fast the years had really gone by. In some senses, they'd seemed to drag on. In fact, there were a lot of ways in which she still felt like they were dragging on. She could hardly wait to turn eighteen and get out of high school, start hunting and be a Winchester in every sense. But in other ways... She could remember when she'd first started drinking coffee at thirteen and that had been enough to make her feel grown up. Now she often wavered between feeling too grown up before she was ready and feeling like she was never going to grow up.

As she sat back down at the table, she prepared herself to push for a little more room to grow up. "You said we're goin' to Great Bend, right?"

Dean hummed a 'yes,' but he then looked up in dread as if he knew what she was going to ask him.

"Can I drive?" Anna asked and smiled so hopefully she knew he couldn't turn her down.

Dean closed his eyes and took a measured breath, and Anna's eyes brightened. He was giving in. It was clear he didn't share her joy when he opened his eyes and said, "Fine."

Anna's face broke into a grin. She was about to say thank you, but he cut her off, trying to maintain his stern appearance.

"But only because it's only twenty minutes. And if you miss _one_ stop sign-"

"I won't! I swear." Seeing that he'd reached the end of his warnings, she bit her bottom lip to try and get a handle on her childish excitement. She didn't want to appear immature considering that he'd just agreed to let her drive his Baby to an actual _case_. But she couldn't help the smile that kept wanting to spread over her face. To her great relief, Dean got up to put his plate in the sink, and she didn't need to mask her excitement anymore. More to her chagrin, he ruffled her hair as he passed her. But he had a smile on his face, so Anna let it slide.

()()()

At nine that night, Anna groaned and dropped her forehead to the table in a motel room indistinguishable from the other ten million she'd stayed in over the course of her lifetime. The day had started off reasonably well when she got to drive to Great Bend-- and she'd _slayed_ it the whole twenty minutes without a single sloppy turn. Then, after the boys had spent most of the morning trying to find a lead on the case, at lunch, Dean had called and scheduled her driver's test for October 2nd, which meant she would officially be a licensed driver before turning seventeen. The day was looking good to her.

But then she'd settled in to get her homework done.

"You gonna let me help you with it now?" Sam asked.

Anna wrinkled her nose against the table. She didn't want to admit defeat, but she'd been trying to work through _one_ math problem for almost two hours now. She was getting nowhere. "Fine," she said into the table. "But only because math isn't worth another eight hours of my life."

"It hasn't been _eight_ hours," Sam said and rolled his eyes. He set his laptop aside on the bed he'd been reclining on and got up to meet her at the table.

Anna lifted her head and squinted defiantly at him, insisting with her sharp gaze that it had been _too long_ , and so who cared if it hadn't been quite eight hours?

Sam was unintimidated by her glare, though, and he just came up to stand behind her chair and look over her shoulder at the math assignment. "What is it?"

"I'm supposed to graph this bitch of a rational function."

"Watch the language."

Anna made an annoyed face, which Dean saw from the other side of the room and couldn't let go, because her luck was so impeccable tonight. "Lose the attitude while you're at it."

The insinuation that she had an 'attitude' gave her the beginnings of one, and she had to work to keep her face from getting even more sour. Instead she just said, "Fine," and put on a super fake smile. "I'm supposed to graph this beautiful, perfect, wouldn't-change-a-thing-about-it rational function."

Sam pursed his lips at her, but there was a poorly masked smile under there. He looked again at her paper and asked, "What'd you do?"

"Uh... failed. Miserably. Like, all day."

"I mean, show me the graph you drew."

Anna sighed and pulled out the piece of loose leaf graph paper she'd been using before. "I think I screwed up when I simplified to start with, because my intervals make literally no sense. But I've redone it a billion times, and I swear I get weirder numbers every time."

Sam scrutinized the scribbles she'd covered the page with and then eventually shook his head. "Not gonna lie, Ladybug, I can't even make sense of what you wrote."

Anna's eyebrows popped up, and her mouth formed an 'o' even as she started snickering a little in amusement. He'd never been so blunt with her before even though math was her worst subject, and she'd therefore presented him with some very sloppy work in the past.

"Here, start doing it, and I'll tell if you make a mistake."

Her nose wrinkled in annoyance at the thought of trying the problem _again_. But Anna picked up her pencil and got to work. She only got as far as multiplying for a common denominator when Sam stopped her.

"You skipped the b term."

"What?"

"You're supposed to multiply by x squared plus two as one term and distribute, but you skipped the b term."

Anna frowned as her eyes followed his finger on the page, but it clicked after he'd explained. "Shit," she breathed as she realized what a dumb error she'd made and hurried to erase and start again.

"Language," she heard from two voices at the same time.

It only took her five more minutes to finish the rest of the problem as Sam sat and watched, not stopping her again. "Is that seriously all I did?" she asked in disbelief when she saw the new intervals she was working with. The numbers looked much more reasonable.

"Shoulda let me help an hour ago," Sam subtly rubbed it in.

Anna narrowed her eyes at him. But a second later, she wrinkled her nose as the glare fell away. "I hate that you're right."

Sam quirked a smile at her and stood up. He looked over to Dean. "Ready to go?"

Dean got up, tossing his phone aside onto the bed and snatching his jacket off the bedpost. "Yeah."

Anna frowned and looked up, pencil poised over a freshly drawn coordinate point on her math homework. "Where you goin'?"

"Research," Dean said, then smirked.

"Bar around the block," Sam amended, shooting Dean a disapproving look for the fib.

"To talk up the locals," Dean defended.

Anna rolled her eyes. Why they felt they had to excuse anything to her, she didn't know. "Get as blasted as you want," she said. "If you're still drunk in the morning, I don't have to go to school."

"Yeah, you wish," Dean snorted and opened the door. "Lock the door, fix the salt, and call if you need something."

"Yeah, yeah," Anna waved off the instructions she knew by heart.

"I'm serious," he said as they lingered in the doorway. "This door better lock behind us."

Anna reluctantly got up from her seat so she could turn the lock after them, and that seemed to be what Dean was waiting for. They closed the door, and as tempted as she was to give it a minute and see if he would storm back in, Anna turned the lock right then.

She looked down at the salt line that had been broken when they opened the door to leave and used the bottom of her socked foot to realign it until it was whole again. "Cool," she muttered to herself when she'd finished. She shook her foot to get off the salt that had stuck to the bottom of her sock and then went back to the table to finish her math homework. It only took another ten minutes to finish the problem sheet.

She edged quickly into total boredom. There was no TV, but she had her laptop, so she pulled up Netflix and spent almost half an hour trying to find something she felt like watching before changing her mind, pulling up Hulu, and starting an episode of _Rick and Morty_. She'd seen the entire series several times over, but it never failed to make her laugh.

She watched it until 11:30 and was thinking about going to sleep when her phone started buzzing like crazy. She picked it up curiously just in time to see a call go to voicemail. It was Ethan, which was odd. They were only _sorta_ friends, and they didn't talk that much outside of school unless Kate had invited them both to do something.

A text appeared on her lock screen, and Anna frowned as she read it. _Pick up it's important_.

Almost instantly, her phone began to buzz with an incoming call again, and Anna frowned even deeper. She had a bad feeling gripping her by the stomach now, and her heart was beginning to hammer in her chest.

She swiped to answer the call and didn't bother with a greeting. "What's wrong?"

" _It's about Kate._ "

Anna's heart hit the floor, and she began to feel nauseous. Her head swam. "What happened? Is she okay?"

" _Yeah, I think so. You know how her mom was taking her to that thing?_ "

"Yeah, she's been talking about it all week. What the hell happened?"

She swore she could hear Ethan swallow nervously on the other end of the line. " _They got in an accident. They're at the hospital in Lebanon._ "

"Oh my god," Anna breathed in horror. She slammed her laptop shut, effectively cutting off the sounds of a cartoon scientist's drunken ramble to his grandson. She struggled to get her brain working and come up with a coherent plan. "Okay. Okay. Are they okay? For sure?"

" _Yeah, I'm at the hospital now, but they're not saying much. I know they're alive, but I don't even know how bad the accident was._ "

Anna nodded frantically. "Okay, if they tell you anything else, call me again," she requested. "I'm in Great Bend, but I'll be there in, like, twenty minutes."

" _Yeah, 'course_ ," Ethan promised.

Anna hung up and spent a minute controlling her breathing. Once she felt marginally calmer, she raised her phone again and hit speed dial. It rang. And rang. And rang. And rang. And went to voicemail. "Dammit, Dean," she snapped as she listened to his voice telling her to leave a message. She hung up before she could give any information. Instead, she called Sam. His phone rang. And rang. And rang. And rang. And Anna tossed her head back in frustration, tears forming in her eyes. She was in a state of total panic, worried she was going to lose her best friend tonight, and she couldn't even get ahold of her brothers. Sam's voicemail promised her a call-back as soon as he was able, and Anna huffed into the phone.

"Sam, Kate got in a car accident. She's in the hospital. I don't know if- how-" She realized she was just panicking into the phone and gave up. "Ugh," she growled in frustrated misery. "Nevermind." She hung up. He wouldn't get her message in time to do anything about it if he couldn't even hear his phone over the noise of the bar.

She looked around the room, trying desperately to come up with a solution. But even if she ran around the block and found her brothers in that bar, they would probably be too drunk to get behind the wheel-- that was the whole reason they'd walked instead of taking the car when they left a couple hours ago. Her eyes settled on the car keys Dean had left on the nightstand, and the wrinkles of fear and helplessness on her face smoothed out. There was only one thing to do. She just hoped she would live to tell the story.

()()()

Driving while her body buzzed with anxiety and her mind raced with thoughts and images of Kate's potential funeral was a different experience altogether from every time Anna had driven with Dean in the passenger seat reminding her to turn on a blinker or slow down or stop riding the brakes. It was different not only because she could barely breathe and felt like she was going to puke at any moment, but also because she was alone in the car, and that was technically illegal since she only had her permit.

She very nearly ran a red light leaving Great Bend and had to forcibly slow her breathing and calm herself away from the edge of tears in the time it took for the light to turn green. Once it did, she hit the gas again and swallowed hard, trying to make herself focus. She was usually so good at that. Her phone buzzed on the seat beside her, and she slowed down, glancing down at it. If it was Sam or Dean, she would be so screwed. But it was Ethan. She looked back at the road, made sure she was well within her lane, checked her mirrors, stayed well under the speed limit, and glanced back at her phone to skim the message.

_Doctor says she's okay. Letting me see her._

Her hand itched as Anna forced her head back up and returned her attention to the road. She wanted so badly to pick up her phone and demand answers. But she knew better. She shouldn't even have _read_ a text while driving, especially considering she had so little experience behind the wheel.

Dean would've lectured her for an hour at _least_ if he'd been there to see that. He'd spent a long time drilling every expectation about driver's safety into her head before he ever took her driving.

Anna swallowed again, repeating as a mantra in her head. _Doctor says she's okay_. Kate was okay. Kate would be okay. She didn't need to book it to the hospital for a final goodbye. She just needed to stay calm and make sure she got to the hospital in one piece. And got Dean's car to the hospital in one piece. She didn't want to imagine the consequences if she managed to get in an accident herself. Just the briefest thought of that was enough to make her breath hitch in her chest.

A glance down at the speedometer told her she was going too fast, and Anna let off some of the pressure she'd been putting on the gas pedal. _Kate is okay_ , she reminded herself. _She's okay_.

It was supposed to be a twenty minute drive from Great Bend to Lebanon, and it should have been more like thirty minutes considering she had to cross town and go through several sets of traffic lights to reach the hospital. But Anna made it to the hospital parking lot in eighteen minutes. She thought vaguely once more about the fact that Dean would have killed her if he'd seen her driving like that.

In the emergency room, she raced to the front desk. There were two receptionists there sorting papers, both of them short brunettes and both of them women.

"Hey," she said breathlessly to the closest one. She placed her palms on the desk and panted for a second. "Hi. I'm looking for a girl who just got in a car accident. Her name is Kate Foster. She would've been with-" she panted some more- "with her mother. Um... can you help me? Please," she added quickly.

The woman she'd spoken to looked up at her slowly. Only then did Anna notice the phone in her hand. "Talk to Christy, hon'," she requested softly, cupping her hand over the phone's speaker and gesturing to the second receptionist.

Anna nodded frantically, her breathing still heavy, more from anxiety now than from her exhaustion at having raced from the parking lot to the emergency room waiting room. She moved around the desk and started bouncing on her heels in front of the other receptionist. "My best friend just got in a car accident," she said, again sounding more frantic than she usually let herself appear. "Her name is Kate Foster. She would've been with her mom."

"Right," Christy said and began typing away on her computer. "How old are you, honey? You have a parent or guardian with you?"

"What? No. Does it matter?" Anna asked, hoping the answer would be 'no.' "I'm sixteen." She silently hoped that would sound old enough to the receptionist for her to be let past to see her friend.

"I'm just askin'," Christy assured. "Your friend is in Room 219 in the pediatric ward. I'll take you up, but I want you to call your parents."

Anna wrinkled her nose, something in her rearing at the woman's concern. She wasn't sure whether it was because she'd said 'parents,' or simply because she was so tired of being spoken to like a kid these days. "I can find it," she said instead of taking Christy up on her offer. "Thanks." She heard the receptionist standing up to follow her, but she hurried toward the stairs and followed all the signs until she finally found the pediatric ward. "Guess you really are okay," she murmured of Kate as she started scanning room numbers in the hallway. "Or you'd be in the ICU."

She turned the corner finally into Room 219, and her whole body seemed to sigh physically in relief. Kate was sitting on a bed with her left wrist in a cast and a scrape on her forehead, but she otherwise looked fine. Tired, but fine. Ethan and his dad were sitting next to her bed, and Kate's father was standing beside her bed, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

She strolled inside without any of her earlier fear or frustration on her face. "Hey, Katie."

Kate grinned from ear to ear when she saw her. "Hey. You didn't have to come out here at midnight. I'm fine. So's my mom."

Anna walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed since all the chairs were taken. "Ethan made it sound like you were dying, so..." She looked at the scrape on Kate's forehead as Ethan scoffed on the other side of the bed.

"I didn't say that."

"Well, you didn't tell me all she did was break her arm."

"It's my wrist," Kate interrupted. "And if you two start bickering..."

"We don't bicker," Ethan defended.

Kate rolled her eyes, and Anna smirked. They totally did bicker. Constantly. But there was never any malice in it.

"So," Kate said, rolling her head along the wall behind her so she could look at Anna again. "Where's your brother?"

Anna glanced up at Kate and then back down, a sudden lump appearing in her throat at the reminder of what she'd done to get here. "Which one?" she stalled.

"Uh... the one who drove you here at midnight..." Kate said. "I should probably say thank you."

"Yeah, uh, about that. Don't bother. I came here myself."

Kate's eyes went wide. "You-" she cut herself off, looking at both the adults in the room before shooting Anna a look that said, _How stupid could you possibly be?_

"I was just in Great Bend," she said, then purposefully changed the subject in an effort of shaking the attention of the people in the room she wasn't close to like she was Kate. She gently reached for her friend's casted wrist. "I gotta be the first one to sign your cast," she decided. "Will it hurt if I do it now?"

"Nah, it's numb."

Anna started looking around for a pen or sharpie and was surprised when Kate dangled one in front of her face. "The ER nurse gave it to me," she explained as Anna took it and pulled off the cap.

Kate's father shifted where he was standing beside his bed. "Honey, I'm gonna go see your mom, okay?" Kate nodded, and her dad left the room.

"Seeing as you're all alright now," Ethan's dad said, putting a hand on his son's shoulder. "I think we'll be taking off too. But if you or your family need anything, feel free to call us up."

"Thank you, Mr. Durest," Kate said politely.

They started toward the door, but Ethan spun back and held his hand out to Anna. She frowned in confusion for a second, but then she smirked and handed him the sharpie. He wrote his name sloppily a few inches from Anna's signature and capped the marker before passing it back.

Once it was just the two of them left in the room, Kate narrowed her eyes at Anna. "Did you drive here without a license?"

"Yeah, because I thought you might be dying."

"Of course, I'm not dying. It was a fender bender.

"You broke your arm, Kate. And nobody had any real word on how you or your mom were doing."

"Well, I'm sorry I freaked you out. But do you realize what you did?"

"Oh, it gets worse," Anna groaned and buried her face in her hands.

"What did you do?"

She looked up at Kate and wrinkled her nose, trying to appear innocent. "I stole Baby."

Kate went pale. "You're gonna die."

"I'm so gonna die."

"You stole your brother's car? Really? Why didn't you just have Dean _drive_ you here?"

"He and Sam went out drinking, and they didn't answer when I called. I guess the bar was too loud for them to hear when I called or something. I don't know. Even if they'd answered me, they'd have been at least a few drinks in. I would have had to drive anyway."

"But at least you would've had a licensed adult in the car."

"A drunk licensed adult."

"Anna, you're doing that thing again where you pretend you thought about what you did before you did it. And we both know you didn't."

"That was a lot of dids and didn'ts," Anna mumbled.

" _Anna_."

"I'm sorry, okay? Maybe I didn't think it through _all_ the way, but I was out of options, and I kinda panicked. Don't get a big head about it, but I'm kinda fond of you, Kate. I didn't really want you to die."

"Yeah, instead you were gonna get yourself killed trying to get to me."

"Precisely," Anna said, but the joke was weak. Even worse, the second she'd finished speaking, her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out, wincing as it continued to vibrate. She was getting a call. The caller ID made her cringe even harder. "I'm gonna... take this in the hallway. You know, so you don't have to listen to the yelling."

Kate gave her a sympathetic look and nodded.

Anna walked out into the hallway and swiped her phone screen before moving her phone to her ear. "Hey," she answered quietly.

" _Hey?_ " Dean repeated incredulously. Beyond the incredulity, Anna could hear even in just that one word how pissed he was. She was so gonna die." ** _Hey?_** _You stole my car._ "

"Yeah, about that, Kate-"

" _Oh, I heard the message. Very informative. Tell me she's okay so we can get back to the part where you_ ** _stole my car_**."

"Yeah," Anna said timidly. "She's okay."

" _Great, now let's talk. You stole my frickin' car._ "

"It was an emergency!" she tried to excuse, but he was having none of it.

" _Yeah, well, since you seem to have forgotten, let me give you a pro tip. When you don't have a driver's license, an emergency doesn't mean you steal my car_."

"Well, what was I supposed to do? I called you!"

" _Yeah, see, that's not how this works. You're not turning this around on me._ "

Anna kicked lightly at a chair sitting in the white-washed hospital hallway. There was a painting on the wall that depicted a child with an umbrella holding hands with a woman as they walked into the background. She remembered those days. How simple they'd been.

"Well, what do you want me to do? Drive back?"

" _No!_ " She heard Sam's voice combining with Dean's as they both shouted that response. " _Stay there._ "

With a sigh, Anna said, "Okay, okay."

" _Anna, I swear to God, if you move an inch._ "

"I won't!"

" _We'll be there in half an hour._ "

Anna frowned. "How-?"

" _Don't worry about it. Why don't you just spend the time thinkin' up a good story,_ " Dean suggested, his voice so low and dangerous Anna began to really wonder whether she would live to see the next morning. Well, technically it was after midnight so she already had.

She thought maybe she should throw in a quick apology. But that wouldn't be enough to soften his resolve now. She knew that. She'd messed with his _Baby_. There was no crime more heinous when it came to Dean Winchester.

" _Stay_ ," he reminded her firmly before abruptly ending the call.

With a grimace, Anna looked at her phone screen and shoved the phone back into the pocket of her sweatpants. It was only then that she took a minute to look at herself. She hadn't changed before leaving the motel in Great Bend, so she was still dressed in an old pair of black sweatpants and a simple white t-shirt. But she'd thrown on her canvas jacket and her OSIRIS high tops, so she looked somewhat put together... but not really. She heaved a sigh at how badly this night was going and then headed back for Kate's room. She figured she might just as well say her final goodbyes.

()()()

"He really doesn't even want to look at me, huh?" Anna tried to peer around Sam to see the Impala where Dean was sitting. But Sam blocked her view by leaning forward more.

"Dean's angry, and he's not entirely sober yet. He wants to be level-headed when you guys talk," Sam explained reasonably. "But right now, _we're_ talking."

Anna forced herself not to react negatively to that sentence. She didn't want to hear two lectures about why what she did was stupid. She didn't even want to hear one. But if she said either of those things out loud, she was just going to earn herself a third lecture, this one on respect. So instead she just said, "How level-headed do you think he's gonna get, Sam?" She looked down at the pavement of the sidewalk under their feet. She whispered the next part, still unable to believe how stupid she'd been. "I stole Baby."

Sam scoffed. "Baby's just a car, Anna. A beautiful, important car. But a car."

"And that perspective is exactly why you're not too pissed to talk to me, but Dean is."

"You really think the Impala is why he's so mad at you?" She frowned in confusion as Sam let her sit in that question for a minute. "Really, Anna?"

"Uh... yeah?" Sam's anger seemed to actually ratchet up a notch at her answer, and it startled her. "What?"

"Dean's not pissed 'cause you still his car. Well, I mean he is, but not- He's pissed for the same reason I'm pissed. He's pissed 'cause you don't have a license or any experience driving by yourself, and yet you decided that driving half an hour to the hospital by yourself while you were in a shitty headspace was a good idea. You shouldn't have been driving without a licensed adult in the car as it is. Add panic to that, and something really bad could have happened. _You_ could have been the one in the hospital bed, and maybe in a lot worse shape than Kate was. Nevermind the car."

Anna looked at the ground again, this time in shame. Maybe there _was_ a lot about this that she'd overlooked. She felt like she was a pretty good driver. This morning had been proof of that. The fact that Dean had scheduled her driver's test had been proof of that. Hell, the last year plus had been proof of that. She was a natural behind the wheel, and everybody had been saying it since she'd first started.

But her judgement today had been very _very_ bad. She knew why. As much as she hated to admit it, Anna knew she was bad under pressure. Not all kinds of pressure. She did really well in the heat of the moment when she was hunting. But when her emotions ran high... she tended to let them take over. It was the same kind of shitty decision-making that had led her to make the choice that led to her mother's death. The same kind of decision-making that had left her feeling like crap for weeks after that party she went to with Kate.

"So, he doesn't want to talk to me because he's mad that I almost got me killed?"

"Basically," Sam said tersely and with a dry huff of laughter. "But I bet he brings up the car. A lot. What were you thinking, messing with the Impala?"

Anna groaned, "I don't know."

"He's coming," Sam said and gave her a sympathetic pat on the back before getting up and leaving. "See you on the other side."

Dean's shadow passed over her briefly before he sat down on the bench next to her. She could feel the anger coming off of him in droves. She had no desire to face him now, at five in the morning with the sun just risen, especially since she hadn't gotten any real sleep and was still coming off the adrenaline of having thought her best friend might be dying. She was all around not at her best.

"Look at me," he demanded, and she did.

It seemed like a bad time to even think about questioning him, and she figured blindly doing what he told her to do would be in her best interest for now. But boy was it hard to keep eye contact with him when he looked like that. She bit the inside of her lip and hoped he couldn't tell how nervous she was. It wasn't like he would really do anything to her, but she didn't like being the object of his anger.

"You realize if Sam did what you did, I'd have punched him in the face, right?"

Anna couldn't help the confused look that passed over her face. Sam was plenty old enough to have his license...

"Stealing my car," Dean growled. "While your head ain't even in the game. 'Course, if your head _was_ in the game, you'd know better than to steal my car. Or drive without a permit."

A memory tickled at the back of her brain. Sam, when his mental health was at one of its lowest points, when he was quite literally seeing the Devil around every corner... He'd stolen the Impala. And Dean had punched him in the face for it. She remembered back then when Dean had spent the whole ride alternating between ranting to her and Bobby about what an idiot Sam was that he would take the car and go off to work a case by _himself_ when he was so far from his best. She thought back to what Sam had told her, that Dean's anger wasn't about the car, but that it was about her. She realized quietly that when Dean expressed anger about the Impala, he was talking, at least in part, about the fear that he'd had for _her_.

"Anything could have happened. What if you'd gotten pulled over?" he demanded. "You don't even have a license. What if you wrecked the Impala?"

Anna was itching to come back with _I didn't!_ But she knew how well that would end, and she was too tired to talk Dean in circles. "Okay, so maybe I didn't really think that far ahead. But I know how to drive."

"Yeah, except what did I tell you before I let you ever sit in the driver's seat?" he asked harshly. He wasn't giving her any slack, and Anna was simultaneously glad and annoyed for it. "Come on," he commanded when she didn't answer.

"That you don't get behind the wheel if you don't have your head on straight." He was starting to nod, but a bit of defiance reared in her that just didn't want to let him win. "But I didn't have a choice."

"Oh, come on, Anna. You think I'm gonna buy that? You tell me the same thing every time you mess up."

Anna scoffed and readied herself to deny that wholeheartedly. Dean didn't give her the chance.

"Oh, trust me," he snorted. "I know you think I'm bullshitting. You tell me every time. _This time it's different_ ," he imitated, doing a very bad impression of Anna's voice that left her scoffing a second time. "You always think you had no other choice, but newsflash, Rugrat: Maybe you're just not good at thinkin' on your feet."

Any other day, Anna's hackles would have risen at that. She would have shot out of her seat and listed the hundred times she'd done a good job thinking on the fly. And they'd have talked in circles until Dean got her to see reason. But she didn't need him to talk her around to it this time. She understood what he meant without trying to prove him wrong until he amended his wording. "So, I got a little narrow-minded."

"You get more than narrow-minded," he said, speaking now as if this was a general rule about her.

Maybe it was. Anna began to feel a little self-conscious. She almost always felt that way when somebody pointed out a trait of hers that she hadn't been aware of but that was completely accurate even if she didn't want to admit it.

"You get impulsive. You have to quit runnin' with the first solution that pops into your head, kid. You're gonna get yourself hurt if you don't start thinking through all your options before you make a choice."

"I think sometimes," Anna argued weakly.

"That's cute," Dean deadpanned. "Look, you're exhausted. I can tell. So we'll talk more later today after you've gotten some actual sleep-" Anna's eyes brightened a little at the implication that she might not have to go to school, and Dean rolled his eyes but nodded. "Yeah, you're playin' hooky. But you're gonna spend the time _sleeping_ ," he said sternly.

Anna nodded eagerly. That was honestly all she wanted at the moment. Crashing in her own bed back at the bunker sounded incredible. "We goin' back to Great Bend?" she asked.

"Yeah. Anna." She pulled her gaze away from the ground to look at him again. His tone had implied he would stand for nothing less. "I'm movin' your test."

Any ounce of joy drained from her body, and she was sure it showed in her eyes and body language.

"Just a couple weeks," Dean promised. "But it's just to show you I'm serious. You don't get to be reckless with my car _or_ with your life. That just ain't how it works, and I'll keep moving your test date until you're thirty if that's what it takes to get it through your head. So don't pull a stunt like this again. Ever. Capiche?"

Anna nodded seriously, her disappointment still evident in every line of her face. The thought of waiting any extra time before she could get her license made her want to scream. But part of that was probably the fatigue. Anyway, she knew she deserved the consequence, even if she did hate it with her entire being.

She'd messed with two of the three things Dean held most dear. All things considered, she'd gotten off easy.

_La Fin_


End file.
